The twenty-fourth and twenty-fifth chapters of Matthew are most interesting and challenging, because they are directed toward the time of the end of the Christian age and the beginning of the Kingdom.
They focus on the coming, the return of the Lord. They focus on the signs of the times and the conditions that will be prevalent at the time the Lord returns. The twenty-fifth chapter talks about ten virgins, five wise and five foolish. The Lord came and how decisive that was! Those who were unprepared were shut out. Those who were prepared went in. Matthew twenty-four contains the judgment parable which tells us that when the Lord returns He will gather the nations before Him and like sheep and goats they will be separated by the great Shepherd.
“For it is just like a man about to go on a journey (Christ was then about to go back to the right hand of the Father.), who called his own slaves, and entrusted his possessions to them. And to one he gave five talents, to another, two, and to another, one, each according to his own ability; and he went on his journey. Immediately the one who had received the five talents went and traded with them, and gained five more talents. In the same manner the one who had received the two talents gained two more. But he who received the one talent went away and dug in the ground, and hid his master’s money. Now after a long time the master of those slaves came and settled accounts with them. And the one who had received the five talents came up and brought five more talents, saying, ‘Master, you entrusted five talents to me; see, I have gained five more talents.’ His master said to him, ‘Well done, good and faithful slave; you were faithful with a few things, I will put you in charge of many things, enter into the joy of your master.’ The one also who had received the two talents came up and said, ‘Master, you entrusted to me two talents; see, I have gained two more talents.’ His master said to him, ‘Well done, good and faithful slave; you were faithful with a few things, I will put you in charge of many things; enter into the joy of your master.’ And the one also who had received the one talent came up and said, ‘Master, I knew you to be a hard man, reaping where you did not sow, and gathering where you scattered no seed. And I was afraid, and went away and hid your talent in the ground; see, you have what is yours.’ But his master answered and said to him, ‘You wicked, lazy slave, you knew that I reap where I did not sow, and gather where I scattered no seed? Then you ought to have put my money in the bank, and on my arrival I would have received my money back with interest. Therefore take away the talent from him, and give it to the one who has the ten talents.’ For to everyone who has shall more be given, and he shall have an abundance; but from the one who does not have, even what he does have shall be taken away. And cast out the worthless slave into the outer darkness; in that place there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth.” Matthew 25:14–30.
Let’s start at the end of this passage: “And cast out the worthless slave into the outer darkness; in that place there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth.” That’s kind of harsh, isn’t it? to cast him into outer darkness? a place of weeping and gnashing of teeth? Wouldn’t that be a dismal thing? Imagine someone sent into outer space, unable to die, fully conscious, with no destination except to wander in orbit in outer darkness. Just because he buried a talent? Does that seem cruel and unfair to you? It is not. This fellow wasn’t with it. God gave this parable to teach. He’s giving us the treasures of the Kingdom of God. When anyone has committed to him from the Lord the great treasures, the great talents of this walk, to know the truth that can bless millions, and for him to selfishly bury it in his earthly existence, in the cares of life, and to lose that treasure—this becomes criminal. You have only to see the young people coming in and the churches coming up, you have only to see what God wants to do in the earth, to realize that we have the answers. We have the ministry. We must rise above our battles, rise above the principalities and powers, and set ourselves determinately to do the will of the Lord with all our hearts. We must do it. There is something about this that makes it criminal if we don’t do it.
I have a new evaluation of what is right and what is wrong. It doesn’t matter how good you are, if you’re good for nothing. The Pharisees and prudes will be dealt with—those who become so indignant over everything that seems to be a little out of line with their moral principles, those who set themselves up as the arbiters of all moral principle and right, and yet have nothing good in them, those who are doing nothing for anyone, who are living lives in which they are not accomplishing anything because they have no purpose, no function. You may call me a radical if you want to, but when I see a man who has fallen into all kinds of sin, willing to get busy doing the will of God and willing to keep trying even though he falls a dozen times as he is running down the road, I’m going to stand with that man from now on because he is set to do the will of the Lord. I watch some of the young people who have real problems. But they make the race. They stumble and fall and when they fall, they fall flat, because they are undoing a lifetime of sin and limitation. They get up and go on because they’re trying to serve God. They’re determined to do something for the Lord.
I’d rather have a man who has all kinds of problems, but who gets up and goes on serving God and ministering in the name of the Lord, than a man of moral excellence, but of no value whatsoever to anyone—not even to himself. Even his goodness is a reproach because it’s an arrogant pharisaism and does not seem to accomplish anything. How much better if we can overcome, and do the will of the Lord at the same time. That is our real goal—doing the will of the Lord out a pure heart.
Here’s the real evaluation of what is right and what is wrong in the sight of God: if I hold this living word and I don’t give it to men, I have become criminal; I have held back the pardon from the man who is condemned to die. For that I’m not only morally responsible, but spiritually responsible as well. In the book of James it says, “He that knoweth to do good and doeth it not, to him it is sin” (James 4:17). It’s sin because the good that God would anoint him to do could have changed the lives of many people. It would have justified all that God had done in that man’s life. But instead, when God poured in of His mercy, poured in of His grace, poured in of His blessing, it dead-ended in that man. It shorted out. No power was generated to reach out and accomplish the function and purpose that God had for him. And a man—no matter how good God has been to him—who has no reason for existence, no purpose in his existence, who has nothing coming out of his life that is an expression of the will of God and the purpose of God in his life, is far worse than any moral leper, any bank robber, anyone to whom you could point. A bank robber can do evil by taking away people’s money and their lives, but he can do no more. However, a man who could reach out to bless thousands of people, but who holds back, causes them to wander in a wilderness of nothingness. He that knew the will of his master and did it not, will be beaten with many stripes. And he that didn’t know his master’s will and did it not, will be beaten with few (Luke 12:47, 48).
We have a living word. Let’s give it. Are you beginning to see the reasoning in this? Five talents—what are you going to do with them? “I’m going out and get five more.” One talent—what have you done? “I was afraid.” There was no action on his part, not a bit. He was afraid to move so he buried what was given to him. Fear is the natural reaction of people who have no goals or purpose in life. I was reading a report about some doctors who are quite concerned about people’s mental disorders and fears, their psychoses and neuroses, which are especially prevalent among society women. These patients had two primary fears: that they were going to lose their money, and that they would lose their looks. These wealthy women were occupied with fears that reached levels of sickness and in each case the doctors found that they had no goals and no real interest in life.
Do we have goals? That’s what it’s all about. “I want you to prophesy over me.” “I want you to minister to me.” “I want to know what my goals are to be.” “I don’t want to fool around with it; I don’t want lesser things, I want to find the will of God.” “What does God want me to have?” “What does He want me to be?” “What does He want me to do?” We are in the hands of the Lord. We are given to Him to do His will with all our hearts, all our minds, all our souls, and all our strength. We’re living for something so great, so wonderful, so marvelous!
Five talents—he went out and gained more. The Lord has defined here that there’s an initiative in our faith and a diligence to develop it. We take the initiative. God gave it to us. Shall we take that talent and use it for God, or shall we bury it in our earthly existence? Let’s use it! Let’s go out and do the business of the Kingdom with the talents He gives, looking carefully for His guidance and for confirmation at every step. That does not happen by itself, automatically. Some say, “Oh, I’m trying, but I just don’t seem to have what it takes. I feel I’m at the end of my rope.” That’s all right; keep on going. There ought to be a deep satisfaction in thinking, “I’m doing the very best I can.” And when God moves in He starts blessing that effort.
Henry Ford once said, “Whether you believe you can do a thing or not, you are absolutely right.” Of course, the Lord said it better, “With God nothing shall be impossible” (Luke 1:37). “All things are possible to him that believeth” (Mark 9:23). We need to get into the business of really believing God for things and believing God for people.
Sometimes people dump unbelief on me. One morning I was talking to a group on the telephone and I kept voicing my faith in the face of their unbelief. Later I learned that they had spent the entire afternoon down on their knees repenting of their unbelief and seeking the Lord. I like that. I want to be so given to believing God and to exercising faith that everyone to whom I speak becomes convicted of unbelief. I want unbelief to be that evil, wicked thing to us that it really is, that we repent of it and get rid of it and pray, “Lord, I am going to believe! I’m going to believe.”
Our motivation in this walk is progressive. We go through three stages. When we first come into the walk we are impressed with what we can receive. That’s all we think about. “Oh, they’re going to bless me and minister to me.” When we come to the second phase, we are impressed by the word that keeps coming, telling us what we can become. That intrigues us. We see the change. And then one day we reach the highest motivation of all: we’re in this walk for what we can give and what we can do in Him.
These talents that God has for you are very important. Until you’re in it, the next phase does not appeal to you. If you’re in it for what you can receive, you’re not interested in becoming much and you’re not interested in giving much. But as you grow, your motivation changes progressively. When you’re in that second phase you think, “Oh, what I’m going to become in the Lord! Like Him! I’m tired of the old. I want the old nature to drop away and I want to be everything in Him.” But when you come to that last stage, something living flows through you. “If any man thirst, let him come unto me and out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water” (John 7:37, 38). That’s it—the flow begins and you’re not alive except for those times.
I thank God for what people do for me, when they pray for me, when they minister to me, and give me a word. And I thank the Lord for what I see day by day in the way of changes, as I know my whole being, the essence of what I am, is becoming more a thing wrought in Christ. I like that. But to tell the truth, I get my thrill from the flow of the Word, and the flow of ministry that reaches others through me. I think I get more out of it than they do. I’m impressed with the word that God brings out of my own mouth. It may seem like utter, fantastic conceit, but I think I am happier than the brides and grooms, when I marry them in a service of prophecy, and I find each wedding service flowing by prophecy, but entirely different than others. Sometimes an ordination service has an apostolic flow from beginning to end. Oh, people get blessed, but I am doubly blessed to feel that flow. The Lord said, “It is more blessed to give than to receive,” and it’s true. The hand is not empty that has extended all that it has. It cannot be, because the intangibles that God heaps upon a person in that process cannot be measured. There are no gauges for it. It is impossible to verbalize the fantastic thing that happens to someone while he is doing the will of the Lord.
Do you really want, above everything else, to be like that man with the five talents? Do you want to trade and do the business of the Kingdom and be able to say, “Master, here it is; here are your five talents plus five more”? That’s what I like to say in the name of the Lord. In the Kingdom, it’s not just what the Lord can do for us that counts, but it’s what He enables us (after He’s worked us over) to go out and do in His name. It’s criminal for us to have so much and not become disciplined in our life and with our time!
A recent magazine article asks the question, “What do we really want to do?” and makes the statement, “If we do not know, sooner or later we will realize that whatever it was, there just isn’t enough time left to do it.” I believe that is true. What are you doing with the word God gave you? What are you doing with the opportunities and privileges God gave you? Your life can count for a great deal more than it is, can’t it? Are you always waiting and putting off? God blesses you and you work things out, but are you doing the thing God wants you to do? The thing you know in your heart God wants you to do—are you taking a step toward it? are you moving into it in the name of the Lord? People have plans but they put them off and never get around to doing anything. They never have enough time.
It is absurd to spend time constantly reacting in accommodation to someone else’s plan. We live our lives according to the will of the Lord or we live it according to someone else’s desire. Sometimes children run from the responsibility of caring for their aged parents. The situation may be difficult, but if God placed them there to do His will, they will make progress spiritually by doing the thing God directed them to do. In other instances it may be the will of the Lord that an individual be relieved of such responsibility and then others in the Body will be led or directed to do it. If God tells you to do something, you can’t fail to do it. You can either make excuses for yourself, or you can get in and try. Don’t make excuses for yourself. Try in faith!
First of all we must distinguish between what is the will of God and what is our own will. We can want something so badly that we begin to cover it over by saying, “This is the will of God,” and it may not be the will of God at all. One man didn’t want to be bothered; he was too fearful. He buried his talent; he didn’t do anything with it. What are you doing?
It takes an honest heart to get down before God and say, “Lord, I don’t want to do this, but do You want me to do it? What’s Your perfect will?” and find His will. Sometimes you find yourself laying aside things when you would love to be able to say, “This is the will of the Lord.” Be sure you distinguish between what is your will and what is God’s will, or you may begin stamping all your plans as being the will of God.
Conflicting loyalties are an easy way to lose out in this walk. Instead of being loyal to the Lord first, we become loyal to everyone else’s demands upon us. “Well, they were sort of expecting me to do thus and so.” We don’t want to displease them. The fear of man is there. A line has to be drawn somewhere. You must decide what God wants you to do and then take a step toward it. You may say, “Well, I’d serve the Lord, but my mother wants me to do so and so,” and the first thing you know you’re doing what your mother wants you to do, and you’re unhappy and unfulfilled as far as the will of God is concerned.
Husbands and wives are that way—not working together to do the will of the Lord, but one demanding something of the other. Parents and children are that way. Parents who should have real maturity and could be doing something worthwhile with their lives, don’t want to displease their children, so instead of fulfilling a ministry they stay home and baby-sit the grandchildren while the parents go running about somewhere. I know there’s a loving ministry we can perform, but we cannot always be submissive to someone else’s demands upon us. The Lord put it right on the line, “Let the dead bury the dead. You go preach the gospel of the Kingdom” (Luke 9:60). Understand what I’m saying. He’s given you some talents. What are you going to do with them? One man buried them. Life with all of God’s endowments was meant to be lived. Let’s live it! Use these things that God lays before you. Don’t let them lie dormant. Use them!
A man in business knows that if he buys a piece of equipment which will be obsolete in ten years, he must use it to capacity during that time to make it pay for itself. He can’t afford to buy a machine and let it stand for ten years keeping it like new and then discarding it. You’re doing that with your talents and abilities. God has given you so much. Get with it. Don’t let it rust out. Start doing that which the Lord has anointed you to do. Get a confirmed direction for your life with two or three prophets and elders speaking, and take a step toward it.
You need to prepare yourself for future areas of ministry and not just be satisfied with what you are doing now. If God raised you up to make money, then make the money and be faithful with it before the face of the Lord; but if the Lord directs you to preach the Word, then preach the Word. Do the things you’re supposed to. Take steps toward them in the name of the Lord.
You say, “I don’t know where to go or what to do.” I don’t think anyone can honestly say that. Neither can anyone honestly say, “I do know where to go and I do know what to do.” I think we draw the leading from the Lord as we go along. Thomas Edison used to claim that he received inspiration. He was a fantastic man with more ideas than anyone I’ve ever heard of. When asked where his ideas came from, he replied, “I just go to prayer, and my ideas come from outer space.” He honestly believed that. Maybe he was crazy, but it was a brilliant kind of crazy.
Where does our guidance come from? We just have faith to reach into it. We look for it. We take a step in it and it comes. I’ve gone into meetings hardly briefed on what the need was, but when I opened my mouth and started speaking, the Lord would lay out step by step entire building programs and many other matters. And when we finished the people would say, “Oh, that’s the wisdom of God. That’s beautiful—marvelous.” Where did it come from? To God be the glory. But you have to take a step and be in the right place at the right time, with your life in His hands.
I’d like to generate a boldness in you. I’d like to see you resolve those conflicting loyalties and not just do what people demand you to do, but what the Lord demands you to do. So many of you are in that place. You know that too much of what you’re doing is being done because people expect it of you and demand it of you, so you go about it out of a sense of duty. You say, “I spend so many hours a week working on the yard because it’s expected of me. What would the neighbors think if I didn’t have every little blade clipped just right?” Stop letting other people live your life for you.
Don’t you think that we ought to re-evaluate everything we do to see if we’re really doing what the Lord wants us to do? Take a mother who is bound by this. She goes to church and she prays, “Dear Jesus, bless my little Johnny.” She comes home and tells Johnny to pick up his coat. He whines, “I don’t want to,” so she picks up his clothes. “Now, Johnny, you’ll have to learn to make your bed.” “I don’t want to, I can’t,” so she makes the bed. “Johnny, eat your vegetables, eat your food.” “I don’t want to. I don’t like it. I want some candy.” After a while she gives him the candy. She does whatever the child wants her to do. Is she a faithful mother? No! What’s going to happen to Johnny? He’s headed for trouble, because nobody loved him enough to love him on God’s terms, and to serve him on God’s terms, and minister to him on God’s terms. She would have been a better mother if she had prayed, “Lord, how do I minister to my Johnny?” Then the first time he whined, “I don’t want to,” she should have said, “I’m impressed in the Spirit that there’s something I want to do,” as she proceeded to turn him over and whack his backside for him. That’s the way it should have happened. But she wasn’t ministering to him on God’s terms; she was ministering to him on his terms.
In this walk we realize that we have only one lord, and that is the Lord. I must pastor on God’s terms, and not try to meet the demands of everyone else. I have to be a man of God. I cannot be a hireling. I am not the people’s servant. I serve them by the will of God. I am God’s servant and God must be the one who tells me what to do. I rarely see anyone met by God who comes for ministry, saying, “I want you to do this to me and that to me. Lay hands on me and change this and change that.” When someone lays out the terms of his ministry he walks away with nothing. But if he says, “Here I am, Lord; meet me,” expecting the Lord to meet him when we lay hands of him, God starts giving direction.
Don’t be a slave to the feelings and wishes of others. You must learn that in this Body we are serving the Lord. And because we serve Him right, He shows us how to serve each other. We serve one another honestly on the Lord’s terms and at the Lord’s direction, the way He senses the thing should be done, not because of the way we feel or react, nor because of the way the other man feels or reacts.
We do want to serve the Lord. I want to serve Him with all my heart. Here’s a principle you’ll have to remember: don’t hesitate to strive for your goal, because what we can conceive and believe, we can achieve. They are doing that in the natural world; how much more it applies to the things that are born in our minds by the Holy Spirit, by the prophecies and the revelation. What we can conceive in our understanding, and believe, we will achieve. I like that. It is a good practical adage, if you will put it to use. Avoid domination by others where that domination distracts you from the real goals God has given to you. Some things you have to do. Do them, but don’t spend much time at it. Put your efforts and energies where they really count in the will of the Lord.
Remember, you’re going to seek involvement and you’re also going to avoid involvements that are out of the will of the Lord. This is the thing that continually bothers people. “Well,” they say, “I want to get out of debt and then I will give more to the Lord.” They mean well by getting out of debt, but then they buy a few more things on the installment plan. They are always involved with something besides the will of God. “Well,” they say, “we needed some things. We thought that the color television was a fine idea and would save money in the long run.” You can deceive yourself with a lot of reasons why you should do this, why you should do that. Forget it! Just forget it! Do the will of the Lord with all your heart and become involved with the thing that is in the will of God. Resolve those conflicting loyalties right now.
I don’t want to be caught in this trap of limping along and feeling that ninety percent of my life is involved in some hum-drum goal and activity that God isn’t even in. I want to live my life so that day by day I’m bringing forth that hundredfold unto the Lord. I’m going to take my talents and multiply them as much as I can. Are you?